by James Axler
"Slowly? Sure. You want the stoppile. Word is it's filled with stuff like you want. But my Dad said it was all bear shit. Doesn't exist. Anyways, folks go there and they die there. That's what they say."
"Stoppile?" repeated Uchitel. "Clothes and food?"
"Sure, mister. Stoppile. Near where Ank Ridge used to be."
Uehitel shook his head. "Where?" he asked, smiling to himself at the obvious wonderment he could read on the faces of Urach and Pechal.
"Near Ank Ridge. That way," he said, gesturing with his head to the southeast.
Uchitel tweaked the lad's cheek, much as a kindly uncle would after his favorite nephew had answered some arcane riddle.
"He tells me that there is a place of great wealth southeast of here, called stoppile, near a place called Ank Ridge." Uchitel consulted the book again to make sure he'd understood the boy. "Yes, the boy is right. Tell the others we will go at dawn."
"And what of him?"
"The boy?"
"Da," replied Pechal in his gentle voice. "What of him?"
"Kill him." It was a matter of supreme indifference to Uchitel now.
The boy died in appalling agony at the hands of Pyeka, the Baker, their incendiary expert. Pyeka found a novel way of introducing elongated pyro-tabs into the youth's body, then lighting them. Pyeka had always thrived on the laughter and praise of his comrades for his cleverness with fire.
The next morning, having forgotten the threat of the cavalry at his back, Uchitel led his group toward Stoppile near Ank Ridge.
South and east toward the stockpile not far from where Anchorage had once stood.
Chapter Eleven
LEAD STREAMED OUT of the silenced MP-5 SD-2s held by Quint and Rachel. The silenced Heckler & Koch blasters fired subsonic rounds, with little more noise than a man coughing. But their effect was devastating in the long, forty-bed dormitory.
When Lori made her move, screaming out a warning, the room became a bedlam of noise and movement. For an instant, Ryan was frozen by the cry from a girl everyone had thought totally dumb. Then he dived for cover, hitting the floor and crawling toward his bed and weaponry; knowing, as he did, that he was likely to be too slow.
He glimpsed feet. They were scrabbling and running everywhere. As he rose, squinting around the bottom of his bed, he took in at a glance what was happening.
Quint and Rachel still stood near the doorway, firing their blasters from the hip. Quint was cackling with maniacal laughter, and Rachel's face was frozen in a rictus of savage hatred. Bullets skittered off the wall, striking sparks from the row of lockers.
"Ice 'em!" J. B. Dix shouted from across the room.
"Talk's fuckin' cheap," muttered Ryan, trying to reach the hem of his long coat; he wanted to drag it from his bed and get at the SIG-Sauer P-226. Another burst of fire exploded along the floor, only inches from his outstretched hand, making him retreat. Then he had the coat and then the pistol, knowing immediately from its weight that it held the full complement of fifteen 9-mm rounds in the mag.
As he maneuvered into position for a clear shot, he heard a piercing scream and saw Lori fall in a tangle of flying red clothes, crimson smearing her face.
"Fireblast!" he cursed, seeing that Quint had moved behind the lockers, only the heavy muzzle of the submachine gun protruding. Rachel had also taken cover behind a bed, cackling her delight at having shot her own great-niece.
He could see only a couple of his own group. Finnegan was crawling toward his bed, after his new model 92 Beretta, hanging in its holster from the bedframe.
And Hunaker.
Her cropped green stubble of hair gleamed in the overhead lights. Hun was marvelously athletic, with exceptional strength and agility. Her own Ingram 9 mm was on the floor, resting against the television. Ryan's eye was caught for a moment by the picture on the screen of a naked couple in bed—a thin-faced man and a beautiful woman with long dark hair.
Making her move, Hun dived into a forward roll, then reached for the blaster. She was straightening when Rachel saw her. The crone hobbled a step sideways, screeched a warning to her husband-brother, then opened up with a burst of continuous fire that ripped into the crouching girl.
Hunaker was hit across the chest, the bullets unzipping her clothes and skin and flesh. She was thrown sideways onto her back. The gun fell from her fingers. She tried to get up again but fell forward in a crouch, her head between her knees, coughing up blood.
"Fuckin' bastard!" screamed Okie, moving toward the dying woman.
"Get back!" ordered Ryan, seeing that Okie would be cold meat for Rachel. But the harridan was too busy laughing at her success. She shouted to Quint, "Done the green bitch, Keeper! Done the…"
Ryan held the stamped steel pistol in his right hand, steadying his aim with his left. Engraved along the top of the barrel in tiny italic script were the words, Schweizerische Industrie-Gesellschaft, J.P. Sauer & Sohn, Eckenforde.
He aligned the leaf front sight with the vee of the back, centering it on the crowing old woman. He squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession.
Blood appeared among the tatters of leather that hung about Rachel's body. Her cap with its tawdry glass beads went flying from her matted gray hair, rattling in a corner of the room. Her arms flung out as though she was trying to stop a runaway horse, and she took three tottering steps backward. She sat on a bed behind her, then rolled onto her side and remained still.
Kicking on the floor, hands to her face, Lori was screaming on a single monotonous note that grated at the nerves. J.B. and Hennings had both got hold of their guns and were opening up on Quint, keeping the malevolent old man cowering behind his makeshift metal barricade. Finnegan had also got hold of his blaster, and Okie had managed to reach her own bed, taking up the M-16A1 carbine.
There was no sign of Doc at all.
Hunaker was moaning only five paces from where Ryan crouched, his warm pistol in his hand, awaiting a chance to waste the Keeper. A lake of blood was spreading slowly from beneath the girl, seeping over the floor.
There was a momentary lull in the fighting. On the television, a kitten appeared for a moment, in a surreal flash from a century back. Hun's headphones still poured out the thin sound of a song about a dock on a bay.
"Ryan." Her voice was the faintest whisper.
"What is it?"
"I'm done, Ryan."
At least four bullets had hit her, dead center in her chest, and Ryan knew it. It would be absurd and dishonest to pretend she would be okay.
"Are you in pain?"
"Not bad. Numb. Mebbe I'll be gone 'fore it fuckin' starts."
"Could be."
Another burst of fire from the others ripped into the lockers and walls around Quint. There was no reply at all.
"Ryan, think you'll ever get to see Sukie again?" asked Hun.
It was a moment before he figured out who she was talking about. Then he remembered. Sukie was the pretty little girl who'd joined War Wag One from War Wag Three just before the shambles of Mocsin. He recalled that Hun had been paying some attention to her.
"If I see her, Hun, I'll tell her. Take it easy, now."
Hunaker was wearing her new black satin blouse with green leaves embroidered on it. The blood didn't show on it at all.
"Don't shoot no more. Keeper says to put up the blasters. Keeper says he'll yield."
Ryan Cawdor stayed where he was, shouting to the old man, "Gun first, Quint. Then you, hands high as you can get 'em."
Nothing happened for some seconds. Then: "Keeper says how can he trust you?"
"Do it. You have my word nobody'll ice you. But throw out the gun first."
There was a tiny sound from Hunaker, and Ryan looked back to where she was huddled.
"Hun? Hun, can you hear me?"
There was an unmistakable stillness to the green-headed girl, and Ryan knew she was gone.
Krysty was close behind him. "Dead?"
"Yeah."
"Don't like to think of h
er dyin' like that, kind of on her own."
Ryan looked around and saw there were tears glistening at the corners of the girl's eyes. "We all have to, you know."
"You swear you won't hurt Keeper? You done for poor, sweet Rachel and little Lori."
"That murderous old slut blasted the kid," shouted Henn.
"Didn't have to chill Rachel."
"Come out, old man," yelled Ryan, the pistol rock steady in his right fist.
"Swear I'm safe."
"You're safe, Quint. Come on, before we come and gun you out of there."
Now they were all standing, all pointing their blasters at where Quint was cowering. Even Doc had finally appeared, clutching the Le Mat cannon in both hands.
"Here's the gun," yelped Quint, tossing the Heckler & Koch on the floor. It skidded and bounced, finishing up a yard or two from Ryan's feet.
"Watch the bastard," warned J.B., who was right behind Ryan. "Could have a hider up his sleeve."
"Yeah. Watch him."
"Keeper's comin' out. Ally, ally oxen free. Don't shoot poor old Keeper. He had to do it. Rules is rules and the law's the fuckin' law, ain't it? You understand, don't ya?"
"Move it!" shouted Ryan, feeling his anger rising. He'd liked Hunaker. She'd been a friend for about three years.
"You promised the Keeper," mumbled Quint, cringing as he left his cover.
His sequinned jacket flashed, gaudy and cheap. The heel had broken on the woman's boot he wore, and he limped, his hands trembling in the air. A thread of spittle dangled from his thin lips, and he was shaking like an aspen in a hurricane.
"Promised Keeper," he repeated.
Ryan put a 9-mm bullet between the deep-set eyes, sending the old man crashing backward, arms flailing, mouth dropping open in shock.
Ryan bolstered his pistol, not even bothering to watch the death throes of the last Keeper of the Anchorage Redoubt. A man didn't get up when he'd been rained on with a 9 mm through the forehead at twenty paces.
"Turn off the vid and Hun's music," he ordered. "Drag those two stiffs out of here. J.B.?"
"Yeah?"
"We'll move out tomorrow. First light. Get all the maps you can. Take Finn and Okie and get some buggies serviced and fueled up. Henn, you and Krysty take charge of stocks of food, pyrotabs, spare snospex, ammo, grens, thermals," he said, ticking off items on his fingers as they occurred to him.
"What may I do to be of service, Mr. Cawdor?" asked Doc, struggling to force the big pistol into its holster.
"Check the gateway's exit and entrance codes. Might come back here for another jump if there's nothing much around. Look out for muties about the stockpile."
"What about her?" asked Okie, pointing contemptuously to where Lori was weeping on the floor, holding bloodied fingers to her face. "Shall I ice her?"
"We'd all be iced if she hadn't shouted," suggested J.B. "How bad is she hurt?"
The girl sat up then, looking around at the angry, tense faces. "Got bullet across head from Keeper." She showed the wound, a livid crease on her head among the blond hair. The wound was clotted with blood that was already drying. It didn't look too bad. "What should I do with the gateway, Mr. Cawdor?" asked Doc, oblivious of the fact that the conversation had moved on.
"Just look it over. Make sure there's nothin' wrong with it. You know more about them than we fuckin' do, Doc, don't you?"
The old man shook his head in bewilderment. "I fear that my memory is rather like a train, Mr. Caw-dor. The farther it pulls away, the smaller it gets."
"What about her?" asked Finn. "She saved us, but she's kin to those dirty bastards."
"Take me," begged the girl. "Take Lori or Lori die here."
"Anybody else for wastin' her?" Ryan asked. Nobody replied. "We take her, then. Okie. Get her bandaged if she needs it."
"What about Hun?" asked the girl blaster.
"Can't bury her. Anyone seen any crems? Lori? Anyplace bodies can be burned or whatever?"
"I show you room where they put some."
"Sure. Doc, you can help. After Lori's cleaned up, go with her, and take Hun down to where she shows you. Some kind of freezin' place, I guess. Use one of the plug-in buggies around. Take those two— " he indicated the corpses of Rachel and Quint " — and dump them out the door near the freezin' place. Check the return code."
"Triple number followed by a letter was common in these places, as I recall," said Doc. "Sure. Come on, people. Let's all get movin'."
SUPPER WAS A DOLEFUL MEAL. More of the microwaves had gone on the blink, and the long room stank of burned food. At least it helped to drown out the sour-sweet scent of death. Finn suggested that they move to another of the linked dormitories for the last night, but everyone felt too tired to bother.
Ryan and J.B. had agreed on what they'd do. The maps showed a large town called Anchorage on the coast. Seemed worth a careful recon to see what remained.
All the maps were loaded; also food, heating supplies, ammo and all the blasters they wanted. Lori's cut had been wiped and disinfected, and she was in good shape, talking excitedly about leaving the stockpile for the first time. Okie was the only one who made her dislike felt. The others simply accepted Lori as one of their own.
The buggies were juiced and ready to roll.
Doc had been unable to open the door to the chambers where they thought bodies might be frozen and stored, so the corpses of Hunaker, Quint and Rachel had been placed outside the door. "Won't hurt Hun now," Ryan had said. Doc had also carefully noted the current reentry code and each of them had it written down and memorized. It was the numbers one, zero, eight, followed by the letter J.
Each ice buggy held three or four people, with plenty of storage room for extra gas and supplies. Ryan was to drive the lead vehicle with Krysty; J.B. would take the second with Lori and Finnegan; Hennings would share the third with Okie and Doc.
The vehicles were already heavily armed with mortars and machine guns. Judging from his encounter with the local muties, Ryan figured they should be more than able to wipe out any opposition.
At the suggestion of J. B. Dix, everyone went to bed early that night to be ready for a dawn start.
Krysty came to Ryan, in the night, whispering that they should go to the next dormitory, where the beds were clean and the smell of death was missing, and where they could make love without being overheard.
They found a bed in the other dorm, and she held him tight, her long hair brushing against his shoulders. "How do you feel about Hun?" she asked.
"Like I lost my blaster," he replied.
"No feeling?"
He shook his head. "No. Hun was good. But she got iced. Maybe you tomorrow, me the next day. Start feelin' sorry and it doesn't never stop."
"Doesn't ever stop," she corrected him, feeling a tremor from his chest as he laughed at her.
"Sure."
"If it had been me?"
He leaned over her, his single eye glittering in the dim light. "You're different, Krysty. You know that."
"You're sort of special, too."
Before dawn they fell asleep, tangled in each other's arms, having made love three times.
AFTER THEY'D DRIVEN the buggies onto the small gale-swept plateau beside the redoubt, they gathered for a last word from Ryan.
"We've got radios, so let's keep in touch. We're Buggy One. J.B.'s Two and Henn's Three. Use the radio only if you have to. Should be able to keep in visual touch. J.B.'s got the maps. We're heading toward where the town of Anchorage was. Should get close by evening."
As he spoke, the ground trembled under their feet and some powdery snow came cascading from the cliff above the redoubt's entrance. "Only a little quake," said J.B. "Plenty of those mothers where you've got volcanoes. Taste the sulfur on your tongue."
The gale was gathering force, and Doc nearly lost his tall stovepipe hat; he secured it with an elastic beneath his chin. "This hurricane puts me in mind of a jest I was once told," he said, half-shouting to be heard above the wind.
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"A jest? You mean a joke?" asked Krysty. "I recall Peter Maritza back in Harmony using that word for somethin' funny. Said it was a word his grandfather used and he kind of remembered it."
Doc nodded, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. "This damned wind! It appears that many, many years ago, back in Kansas, there was a herd of longhorn cattle."
"Was longhorns some sort of muties?" asked Finnegan, curiously.
"Not really, young man. They were grazing out on the open grasslands when a dreadful gale arose. A positive typhoon, it was. And it began to blow ever more strongly toward these cattle."
"Get to the fuckin' point, Doc. I'm freezin' my fuckin' tits off," moaned Okie, huddling against the chill.
"My apologies, madam, though I hardly feel that my style of discourse merits such foul language from such pretty lips. I will proceed. The wind eventually blew with such ferocity that the entire group of cows were lifted from their feet and whisked away over the horizon. They became known forever after as the herd shot round the world."
It was obviously the punchline, so everyone laughed appreciatively. As they climbed into their buggies, Krysty tugged at Ryan's sleeve. "You get that joke of Doc's, lover?"
He grinned at her. "No. Couldn't understand it." Once everyone was aboard, they set off toward the city of Anchorage.
Chapter Twelve
THE NARODNIKI WERE on the right road. They knew that because the mutie woman had told them before they used and abused her, finally spilling her tripe in the snow with the curved blade of the bayonet of a Kalashnikov.
"Ank Ridge?" had been the question from Uchi-tel. "Stoppile and Ank Ridge."
She'd responded to the latter name, gesturing to the south. Her mouth was so misshapen, with only a residual tongue, that she could do no more than nod and point.
So they moved on: a long line of people, heavily furred against the bitter nuclear winter, heeling their ponies and horses toward the rising sun, rifles slung across shoulders, food and ammo weighing down the pack animals. Their eyes were cold as ice, and many of them wore clothes splattered with dried blood.
